


The Maddest Women This Town Has Ever Seen

by DoreyG



Category: Giri/Haji (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, new step-parent or adoptive parent imperfectly & earnestly tries to make kid feel safe/welcome/happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28720572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: It was only after the third day straight of being shown around Paris with a slightly worrying amount of enthusiasm, that she realized exactly what Eiko was trying to do and stopped dead in her tracks.
Relationships: Rei Mori/Eiko (Giri/Haji)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1
Collections: Bulletproof 20/21





	The Maddest Women This Town Has Ever Seen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ashling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/gifts).



It was only after the third day straight of being shown around Paris with a slightly worrying amount of enthusiasm, that she realized exactly what Eiko was trying to do and stopped dead in her tracks.

“Taki?” Eiko asked, hardly sounding all that concerned, and looked back with a bright smile. She was always cheerful around her, was Eiko, in a way that was almost admirably stubborn. “Are you alright?”

She gave her a hostile look. And, when that only produced a faint tilt of Eiko’s head and a slightly wider smile, huffed and crossed her arms. “Are you trying to bond with me?”

Eiko looked confused for a moment, and then mildly amused. It wasn’t really a surprise that the amusement didn’t help matters much. “Yes?”

That… Was surprisingly straightforward. No attempts to change the subject, no offence, not even an explanation once she had been caught. That straightforwardness, strangely enough, left her more off balance than any attempt to throw her off the scent would’ve. “So you’re just going to admit it?”

“Why wouldn’t I just admit it? It’s the truth,” Eiko said, looking a little bemused for the first time, and then a strange smirk crossed her face and she shook her head in resignation. “Ah, I forgot for a moment. I’ve always thought that your family were far too mired in secrecy, double meanings and never saying what they actually mean. And trust me, that comes from the daughter of a gangster. I prefer to be a great deal more direct about these things.”

“Huh,” she said, which seemed about the best response to something that blunt and strangely sensible, and moved on. “ _Why_ are you trying to bond with me?”

“Why wouldn’t I want to try and bond with you?” Eiko asked, again looking mildly bemused. It was as if she had no idea why anybody wouldn’t want to talk to her, even though she’d been dating her mother for at least half a year now and probably had ample idea of just how difficult she could be. “I’ve heard so much about you, first from Yuto and then from your mother. It seemed only natural to want to get to know you.”

She stared at Eiko for a long few moments, using her most unreadable glare. Eiko, again to her mild confusion, simply smoothed out her face once more and smiled back at her blissfully. When she sulkily started to walk again, she wasn’t at all surprised when Eiko obediently trailed after her.

“Don’t you think that it’s a bit odd,” she started eventually, desperately attempting to calm the confused whirl of her mind. “That you’ve heard about me from both my mother _and_ my uncle?”

“Is that a veiled comment on how inappropriate it is to date a man, and then move on to his former sister in law afterwards?” Eiko asked cheerfully, the only indication that she was in any way annoyed by the comment a brief sideways flash of her eyes. “Because if so, I have to say that I’ve heard it all from your grandmother long before now.”

“No, it-” she started, at her most bratty, and then saw Eiko’s deliberately calm expression and knew full well that she couldn’t get away with it. “Okay, maybe a little. Sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologise,” Eiko said, and she somehow got the impression that she meant it. That she didn’t actually want her to fret, or feel guilty, or even back out of the conversation altogether. “I know how complicated these kind of things can be.”

She sent Eiko what she fully intended to be a sour look, but that instead came out strangely wistful. “ _Do_ you?”

Eiko looked at her in return, and on the surface it was wry and irreverent but underneath it was so understanding that she kind of wanted to turn on her heel and run away as fast as she could. “Daughter of a mobster, remember?”

“Hard to forget,” she said darkly… And then sighed. Perhaps with Eiko she could finally be honest; honest in a way that she’d never managed with anybody but Rodney, who was just as much of a fuck up as her. “I just feel that you don’t actually want to get to know me for me. That you’re just doing it for my mother, because she nagged you into it or because you want to get into her good books or because it’s somehow a way to get closer to her.”

There was a long moment of silence, as they kept walking. And then Eiko let out a soft sigh. “Oh, _Taki_.”

She screwed up her face into her very sourest expression, tilted her chin up as if bracing for a punch and glanced across at Eiko challengingly. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Not at all, but I understand why you feel that way,” Eiko said, and there was genuine sympathy in her voice. Not pity, not confusion, not a vague attempt to understand what it seemed like nobody else could: just sympathy, a desire to share her pain. “For most of my life every time my father looked at me he saw not an actual person, not a grown woman capable of making her own decisions, but a mirror of my dead mother. It’s not quite the same thing, but I still got far too used to people looking at me and never seeing me.”

She kept her chin tilted up, vainly bracing, but it was becoming steadily more clear that a blow wasn’t coming. She wasn’t sure what to do with that, wasn’t sure how to navigate understanding instead of incomprehension. “So why are you doing it now?”

“I’m not,” Eiko said, and very carefully didn’t sound offended. It would’ve been easier if she had, it would’ve been a crack she could slip through and make her own. “Do you know what your uncle and mother told you about me?”

“Obviously not how to get in my good books,” she said, again taking refuge in desperate brattiness.

“Obviously,” Eiko agreed, the touch of a laugh in her voice. “They told me all about you, Taki. They told me about how you’re brave and creative and never fail to fight for what is right. They told me about how you’re stubborn and pig-headed and judgemental to a fault. They told me how you’ve never encountered a fight you wanted to run away from, or a person you didn’t want to protect. They even told me about how you stabbed that boy.”

Somehow, even though she knew logically that both her uncle and her mother cared for her, it seemed astonishing that they would take so much time to describe her in minute detail. She found herself staring, desperately trying to stop her lip from wobbling. “They talked about me that much?”

“Of course they did, they simply couldn’t stop doing so,” Eiko said, like it was the simplest thing in the world. “And you know what I thought, as they were telling me all of those things?”

Words were becoming a little hard, through the sense of profound shock. She tilted her head at Eiko in a question instead, waited for her to carry on.

“That is a woman that I could be friends with. That is a woman I want to be friends with,” Eiko said, perfectly matter of fact, and then hesitated for a moment. She wasn’t quite ill bred enough to kick at the ground, which was probably part of the reason why her mother was so keen on her in the first place, but she did drag her heels a little. “I haven’t thought that about many people in my life. Most people I hear about them, and I wonder how they’re going to try to use me.”

There was a long moment of silence, as she absorbed that. For a moment she felt sad for Eiko, but it soon transformed into the same kind of sympathy that Eiko had extended to her earlier. Maybe Eiko really did get what it was like, to walk through life and never have anybody truly look at your face.

“Nobody has ever called me a woman before,” she said eventually, softly. It was an olive branch extended, and she was pretty sure they both knew it. “Nobody has ever really wanted to be my friend before, besides Rodney.”

“Well, they’re all idiots then. Every single one of them would be lucky to be your friend,” Eiko said firmly, in a tone that made her smile. Now that she no longer got to spend so much time with Rodney, now he was desperately trying to pull himself out of his own head, she had truly started to miss having somebody like her around. “Although they might have just been scared that you’d stab them, you never know.”

“That was only once! Or twice. A few times at most,” she said, mock offended, and was surprised by how pleased she was when Eiko bubbled a laugh “...You genuinely like me for me?”

Eiko shot her another sideways glance at that, and the expression on her face was pleased. “Yes.”

She stared at Eiko sideways for a moment herself. And then gave up any pretence of stealth, knowing full well that she was terrible at it, and stared at her full on instead. “And not just for my uncle and mother?”

Eiko looked like she wanted to give a lengthy rebuttal to that, but in the end just about managed to restrain herself. She gave another small smile, inclined her head in a nod. “No,”

It was more than she’d ever thought to hope for, a confusing bounty that she wasn’t entirely sure what to do with. She bounced on her heels for a second, practically hovering down the street, and then decided that a bit of irreverency wouldn’t do any harm as she dwelled on what to do “...Even with all the stabbing?”

“ _Especially_ with all the stabbing,” Eiko said, and gave the kind of laugh that couldn’t be faked; big and from the belly, transforming her face from china doll perfection to something far realer and far happier. “Come on, I know this lovely cafe fairly nearby where they serve the most divine tea, and maybe you can tell me about the stabbings in your own words. I’ll even show you baby pictures in exchange.”

“Okay,” she said softly, happily, and arched an eyebrow in Eiko’s direction because she was eternally unwilling to allow herself to be the only discombobulated person in any given situation. “And maybe you can also tell me about when you’re going to make an honest woman out of my mother.”

Any other person would’ve looked poleaxed, Eiko only looked genuinely amused yet again and slid one arm through hers to drag her fondly onwards. “I can see that we’re going to get on like a house on fire.”


End file.
